Colophon

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”

— Isaac Newton

Web Standards

This site adheres to the philosophy of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation, promoting the bells and whistles of modern browsers even as it supports and recognizes older ones - whether they parse script, CSS, or neither. It respects the hard-learned lessons of the past and separates semantic content from style, maintaining a flexible web that allows future specification growth without rendering the old obsolescent.

Good web standards means good accessibility, which is why this site supports Section 508 of the American Disabilities Act and is fully functional for visually-impaired persons.

Feel free to dig into the source code, turn off javascript, and otherwise put this site through its paces.

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Security

Protecting against common and less-common invasion techniques is extremely important. Guarding against threats like SQL injection — as well as minor nuisances like spam — is expected of the modern web developer, and is taken seriously by this site and its creator.

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SEO

Search Engine Optimization can be a touchy subject. When used properly for on-page optimizations, legitimate link building, and flexible extensibility (ex: Open Graph, RSS, Schema, etc.) improved rankings can be easily obtained. However, SEO has long been a field of diminishing returns. For long-term success, new avenues for marketing must be engaged as relying purely on SEO no longer yields the results of the past. Social media, traditional marketing, campaign design, and online advertising are all required of the modern digital marketer.

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HTML5 & CSS3

There has never been a more exciting time to be part of the web. Websites — like this one — can now sport new HTML5 semantic tags (footer, header, section, etc.) as well as CSS3 transitions and graphics. In fact, apart from the screenshots in the portfolio section, this site contains NO images. Instead, it embraces new CSS3 properties, data URIs, SVG, and pictographic typefaces via @font-face. The best part? It renders this site infinitely scalable: no more worrying about the high-pixel-density display arms race. Everything is essentially vectorized and future-proof, which allows designers more time for polish and UX instead of fretting about the next technological wunderkind.

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Responsive Design

Feel free to grab a corner of this site and resize it at any time. Notice how new CSS loads in to optimize the viewport for multiple resolutions. Thanks to advances in @media-queries and a better understanding of fluid grids, this is easily accomplished and avoids user agent sniffing along with other less-than-reliable techniques. As a result, this site is simultaneously optimized for mobile smartphones, tablets, and desktops!

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Touch vs. Mouse

Since the goal in web design is to reach the largest possible audience while retaining function, it is important to make the site as platform-agnostic as possible. Optimizing for touch and leaving mouse users in the cold or vice versa is untenable, which is why this site supports both. Swipe or scroll, it's the user's choice — not the web's. This debate often breaks down into native apps for specialized devices like smartphones and tablets versus web apps, but why not both? A fancy native app for specialized users and competent website fallback are simultaneously possible.

“Design is the art of gradually applying constraints until only one solution remains”